Debunking the Myths of Global Climate Change

June 30, 2010 by

Numerous advocacy groups, scholars, think tanks and others have proposed a variety of steps to address global warming based on a set of assumptions about the green economy. Yet, while we need to take bold action to address climate change, much of what passes for conventional wisdom in this space is in fact either wrong or significantly exaggerated.

In our recent report, “Ten Myths of Addressing Global Warming and the Green Economy,” ITIF explains how the debate on policy responses to climate change is fueled by an array of myths, ranging from assumptions that high carbon taxes will generate needed clean innovations to the belief the U.S. is the natural leader in the clean energy sector. If we are to effectively address climate change and at the same time become globally competitive in the clean energy industry, policies need to be guided by careful and reasoned analysis.

ITIF dismantles the top ten myths in the debate, which are:

1. Higher prices on greenhouse gases are enough to drive the transition to a clean economy.

2. The U.S. can make major contributions to solving climate change on its own.

9. We are world leaders on the green economy, and it’s ours for the taking.

10. Foreign green mercantilism is good for solving climate change (and good for the U.S.).

Perhaps the most prevalent myth is that carbon taxes or a cap-and-trade regime alone will drive significant GHG reductions and save the planet. The current neoclassical economics-inspired solution focuses on pricing carbon and letting markets work. Proponents have faith that increasing the price of carbon will induce behavior change. But this will only happen when there is a viable and affordable substitute. Adherence to this entrenched myth overlooks the fact that radical innovation in the energy sector is essential to the transformation in how we produce and consume energy in the future. Our strategy must be based on innovation to make the dent we have to make in our greenhouse gas production.

While many people espouse the maxim, act locally, think globally, this doesn’t seem to carry over to the climate change debate. Too many of the policy proposals are based on the idea that whatever the U.S. does to address climate change will be enough. This blindly ignores that the lion’s share of GHG will come from the expected growth in population that will effectively double global energy consumption. Even if we find the political will to impose a price on or limit carbon emissions, and even if those actions were to reduce carbon emissions by 85 percent, this will only account for a 12 percent reduction in global GHG emissions by 2050. Any solution must be one from which every nation will want to implement even in the absence of regulation, carbon taxes, or subsidies from other nations.

And, by the way, cap and trade–the darling of the moment–isn’t a globally sustainable option. It’s a myth that developing nations can afford to pay a premium for low-carbon energy when they are having trouble enough with providing the basics of food and shelter. The conventional policy response is that the United States (and Europe) should either bribe poor nations with massive clean development aid so they can afford more expensive clean energy, or we should penalize them with border adjustable carbon taxes. And neither option comes for free since the United States would need to increase taxpayer-financed aid subsidies to meet developing countries clean energy demand. The end result is that U.S. taxpayers would pay twice in a global cap-and-trade regime—once for their own consumption and once for developing nations’. The only globally sustainable option is the creation of affordable (read “grid parity”) clean energy for all nations.

The reality, however, is that we don’t have the technology we need to make needed reductions in global GHG emissions at a price at or below the price of fossil fuels—no matter what advocates like former vice president Al Gore say. This notion plays into the policy advice that suggests we just need to raise the price of coal and oil a bit, and technology will fly from the shelf and into the market. This ignores a fundamental truth that the needed breakthroughs in clean energy face daunting challenges, including lowering materials and processing costs, improving conversion efficiencies, and gaining better manufacturing yields. Moreover, clean energy innovators recover only a portion of the benefits their technologies produce. Most companies prefer to “free ride” off existing dirtier technologies, making the rational business decision to under invest in fundamentally new green technologies. To spur the technology we need, government must step in, incentivize basic R&D and propel these technologies through the “valley of death” – the phase in the development of technologies between research and commercial introduction in the marketplace.

Incidentally, although energy efficiency technologies and measures are certainly an important part of attaining a lower carbon footprint, in reality these are short-run, stop-gap solutions. If we add all of the potential savings from energy efficiency, they only abate about 25 percent of GHG emissions. To make matters worse, the “low hanging fruit” will grow smaller over time, decreasing returns to our efforts. To reduce our GHG emissions by 85 percent by 2050, we need radical innovation to provide clean energy alternatives, rather than just using carbon-based fuels a bit more efficiently.

In the end, conventional wisdom and neoclassical economics provides us with flawed policy guidance. We contend that we need more than a price on carbon or subsidies on deploying current green technologies to drive green innovation and industry. Only a clean energy innovation strategy can drive the development of affordable, zero-carbon alternatives to address the challenge of global climate change.

The assumption of the “myth” article is that a 50 to 80% reduction in greenhouse gas must be achieved to save the the planet. There is simply no way to prove that assumption using current climate models; the simulations are fundamentally incapable of making meaningful predicitions that far into the future.

Concentrate on producing and using energy more wisely and efficiently, as driven by economics. The “greenhouse gas” problem, whether real or imagined, will take care of itself.

I am thinking about your #6 statement: “Neither living simply nor a massive recession will enable us to obtain the level of reductions required.”

Looking at consumption trends in China, we can see why they are putting a lot of effort into green innovations and sustainable investment (per your item #9). My concern is that you are selling simple living short. And although simpler living in the highly developed nations seems to be your focus (talking about reducing work/income), I think the biggest bang for the buck will come from China and India rethinking their adoption of the western consumer model. That is where the rapid growth of consumption combined massive population lend massive leverage to causing change.

See China: The Next superconsumer? and The Real Population Problem for some good charts and more thoughts on all this. China and India’s need for energy and their growing per capita income and consumption is where the carbon production momentum is. If we can find ways to temper that through simpler approaches to living and consuming, it will have a big effect.

Thanks, jay

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Ed Reid

July 1, 2010 17:32

Mike,

There is no proof that a 50-80% reduction in global annual carbon emissions would be either NECESSARY or SUFFICIENT. I believe that, if it were NECESSARY, it would be INSUFFICIENT.

Atmospheric carbon concentrations have been increasing since global annual anthropogenic carbon emissions were approximately 1/2000th of current annual levels. That suggests to me that atmospheric carbon concentrations would not stabilize until global annual emissions fell below the emissions level at which the concentration began to increase. Reducing the atmospheric concentration from whatever stable level might ultimately be achieved would require either far greater patience than our “instant gratification” culture typically demonstrates, or active efforts to remove carbon already in the atmosphere.

What is perhaps more fundamental is that there does not appear to be any agreement on a single, ultimate goal for any such effort. Goal-free, plan-free incrementalism ain’t gonna’ cut it!

You are right. Low growth is not the answer. Economic contraction is the answer (at least for the OECD countries). We need to substantially decrease our demand on resources, and efficiency alone will not get us there. I realize that I might as well be speaking Sanskrit when I make a statement like this. The vast majority of people are zombies possessed by the Social Will which has declared that the competitive accumulation of consumption rights is a perfect and eternal form, and if this form passes from the world then Chaos and Darkness will resume their old dominion.

This claim may or may not be true, but if it is then I am afraid that Chaos and Darkness will be our future rulers. If industrial society is to survive in the long term then we must create a new cultural definition of human welfare in which total sales volumes is not a measure of success. At the level of practical domestic economy the less often you have to replace/repair basic infrastructure such as water heaters, plumbing, roof tiles, windows, etc. the better off you are. This sort of minimization of resource use needs to become the basic focus of the larger social economy as well, and personal psychic income needs to be sought in some other arena than accumulating consumption rights.

None of this is to suggest that we should completely abandon the scientific project. However, on the practical engineering side of thing we need to start leveraging technological improvements to decrease our ecological footprint rather leveraging them to sell each other more toys.

I realize that these ideas will be rejected as impractical in the sense that no one will pay any attention to them. However, ineffectiveness because of invincible cultural prejudice is not the same thing as impracticality. Suppose that a tribe of preindustrial people living near the ocean refused to leave their ancestral home when they were informed of an approaching tidal wave. “Our gods will protect us from any danger,” they say. A suggestion that they should head to high ground might be ineffective, but it would not be impractical.

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Chris Hill

July 1, 2010 18:50

Darrene,

It is also a myth that responsible observers claim that a carbon tax or a cap and trade system, by itself, can solve the problem of GHG emissions and associated climate change. Christopher Mims in an earlier post made the point well–that is not what people are saying.

It is also a myth, however, that an innovation-led climate change mitigation strategy will be sufficient. We know that GHG emissions are both harmful and unpriced in today’s world. Innovative activity would have to yield spectacular new developments and a myriad incremental improvements in energy production and conversion technologies for low- or no-carbon technologies to compete successfully in the marketplace with current CO2 emitting systems. Without an explicit or implicit “price on carbon,” innovation is highly unlikely to provde the answers, especially within the few decades within which action seems imperative.

It is also worth pointing out that “breakthrough innovation will save us” is another myth in this arena. It is well established that in process industries typical of those that are central to energy production and conversion, the accumulation of incremental improvements over time yields greater performance improvements than do the occasional breakthroughs.

Addressing the climate change challenge effectively will require a host of measures, including a price on carbon, R&D and innovation incentives, selected performance standards, and, yes, U.S. leadership through both action and policy making.

Darrene, this is an excellent note on an important point that is often overlooked in the climate debate. Whether or not cap and trade in one form or another will become US law, the fact remains that we have failed to develop a sophisticated understanding of what we need to do to accelerate clean energy innovation. The heavy focus on the auto mechanics of cap and trade programs in the last few decades has sucked the intellectual air out of what should be robust debates about energy technology, innovation and public investment. These remarks and other work by folks like NCEP, Breakthrough Institute and our group, Clean Energy Group, are beginning to open the door into the discusion of what energy innovation is, what policies are needed to encourage it, and how we work within what are likely to be constrained budgets moving forward. If don’t figure out how to make cleaner technology cheaper than the dirtier alternativesthrough innovation, we have little hope of stabilizing climate emissions. We need a muchmore ambitious federal and state government response to this energy innovation challenge. It’s time for those of us working in this field to propose many new ways to put energy innovation into the forefront of the climate debate. This is a start

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PeterMcClelland

July 2, 2010 00:24

Unlike the others, I think this post lacks perspective. Yes, we all know that the political clamour about the ‘green economy’ is just a way to sell the idea of change to a public who otherwise would not accept new taxes or other inconveniences.

“1. Higher prices on greenhouse gases are enough to drive the transition to a clean economy.”

Not enough by themselves, but a very good and necessary start. We will achieve nothing worthwhile without taxing carbon in some way. The price of fossil fuel is artificially low due to large sunk investment in infrastructure, covert and overt subsidies and complete lack of accountability for the cost of pollution and environmental destruction. Taxing carbon in some way is only making good some of those subsidies, so that less polluting technologies can compete fairly. The higher the tax, the more effect it will have. Innovators will innovate if they believe that a carbon tax at a meaningful rate is a long-term reality.

“2. The U.S. can make major contributions to solving climate change on its own.”

Yes, it can. Or rather, it can almost single-handedly prevent any meaningful coordinated action by stalling. As for the US _only_ comprising 12% of GG reductions by 2050, could you tell us perhaps which other single source of reduction will be as big? My guess is it’s the biggest. Not only that, but it’s symbolically the key to unlocking reductions from the other major players such as China and India. Because USA currently consumes 25% of all fossil fuel energy with less than 5% of the world’s population, it’s hardly surprising that everyone else wants to see the biggest and most rapacious consumer take action before fully committing to planned reductions.

“3. Cap-and-trade is a sustainable global solution.”

Here we can agree. A tax on carbon-based energy at source would be far simpler and more effective, preferably backed up by global agreement.

“4. We don’t need innovation; we have all the technology we need.”

Depends on your world view. “The reality” is that on a finite planet we cannot continue to consume energy at our current rate, assuming of course that we’re talking about everyone and not just small pockets of highly militarised groups who have appropriated most of the world’s resources for their exclusive use. Even with 4-gen nuclear widely deployed, there will be an almost impossible task to rebuild our entire infrastructure at the same time as all of the other limits to growth are simultaneously beginning to bite. At this stage it doesn’t matter what techno-fixes we try to come up with – they will all only serve to mitigate the limits to growth, not to bypass them.

“5. “Insulation is enough” (e.g. energy efficiency will save us).”

Who claims that it will? It’s just a necessary step away from the self-destructive madness that will otherwise collapse our civilisation under a glut of resource conflicts. Why do we delay doing this? Lack of political courage mainly. They know what needs to be done, but dare not tell us in case we turn from denial to anger.

“6. Low growth is the answer…just live simply.”.

Like it or not we’re going to trend towards that, because we’ll be unable to sustain the complexity of our current society as we ever more rapidly exhaust the cheap resources on which it’s founded. Let alone halt and even reverse the destruction of the biosphere which is threatening to change our world in some fundamental and unforeseeable ways. We do indeed have all the technology we need to make the major restructuring. That’s not to say that we won’t improve it, just that we need to get started with what we already have because time is not on our side. However, no matter how we try to restructure we will not succeed with a like-for-like replacement of fossil fuels, because we won’t be able to concentrate enough energy without entirely subverting the entire planel to that end. That would be both a prodigious feat of organisation, and an environmental catastrophe which would eventually destroy us. Either we will realign ourselves as a part of nature, or nature will do it for us, and no technology however it is developed can allow us to continue as we are.

I am in general agreement with the myth-busting points. I think it’s important to start by strengthening the rationale. Fossil fuel technology –> CO2 emissions. The more we (humanity) emit, the larger the stock of CO2 and other greenhouse gases. The larger the stock of GHG’s, the more warming we get. Up to this point, there is a fair amount of proportionality. If we know how much fossil fuel is being burned, we can guess how much temperature increase the earth will experience. But the final step in the chain behaves differently. The warmer the planet becomes, the more climate change we get. Climate change, though, is often triggered by tiny shifts in temperature. It’s a tipping point issue, a phase change issue, a crossing-threshold issue.

So, to work backward, if we are to halt climate change, we have to halt global warming. If we are to halt global warming, we have to cap the stock of atmospheric carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. If we are to cap the stock of CO2, we have to end emissions of CO2 from fossil fuels. If we are to end fossil fuel emissions, we have to replace fossil fuel energy with (mostly) renewable energy. That is roughly the premise of this discussion, but it helps to pin it down.

This implies another way to define targets. By what date have fossil fuel furnaces and stoves been removed from all buildings, or not installed in new buildings? By what date have gasoline engines and petro-diesel been completely phased out of all vehicles? By what date does industry no longer use fossil fuel energy? By what date is all electricity generated from non-fossil fuel sources? I think framing the targets in these terms helps us come to grips with the magnitude of the technology ramp-up challenge we face, across so many different fronts. Emission reduction is a very loosey-goosey term, implying that some residual of fossil fuel consumption is acceptable. It’s not.

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Rmoen

July 2, 2010 15:58

The United States desperately needs an energy policy that focuses on clean, cheap energy.

If, we had a national mandate to replace coal generation with natural gas and nuclear energy. Plus if we replaced our commuter cars with both battery-powered electric cars and natural gas burning cars, plus natural gas trucks, we would drastically reduce our dependence on foreign oil and also reduce CO2 emissions beyond cap and trade targets.

There is a further inconvenient truth that never seems to appear in any of these arguments, and while any future civilization would pick through our rubble and say it was dead obvious, I suppose it is just our basic human egotism that sets up the blindspot on the fundamental basic gradeschool arithmatic that says if you add things, they get bigger, with the common-sense pronouncement that things cannot get bigger forever: the ‘energy’ we say that we ‘use’ is 50% misleading according to the Power Transfer Theorem, and what we really mean is that we tap for slave-work as much as half of the energy we unleash through various means, and then dissipate the remainder as heat. So GHG aside, our exponentially expanding addition to energy-slave power is in itself unsustainable; the planet is simply not designed as an infinite heat-sink for humanity! At some point, there needs to be an unimaginably radical shift in human psychology to say that enough is enough and our rate of energy-liberation will need to be capped at some sustainable gigawatts per hour value.

Earth, we should not be surprised to discover, is a closed system. To that end, what we require is not new sources of energy to then dump half into the ambient environment, but an earnest policy of ephemeralization, a policy of rigour to always get more and more from less and less, the only viable long-term sustainable solution.

Which then actually is a solid argument in support of the Efficiency school.

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Anon Ymus

July 6, 2010 15:56

Just to add to points 2 and 9, as an American ex-pat living in Australia, smaller nations will indeed follow the US if it’s economically feasible for them to do so. The richer nations can put more financial resources behind green technology development, so in practical terms it seems to make sense that the US (and Europe, and China ASAP) lead the transition to clean energy. As far as innovation goes, the reward for tapping into the US market is a powerful incentive for everyone around the world to work on these problems — and we need that to happen. So, I say, yes, the US can lead by merely creating a market for green technologies, even if it’s only in the US initially. From this point of view, a US carbon tax would motivate and enable greener economies in other countries.

When did discussion of climate become dominated by atmospheric CO2? Water vapor, desert land area and viability, and plant growth might seem too basic; but these issues are certainly relevant. Solar desalination might contribute significantly to expand plant growth and reverse some concerns.

When did discussion of climate become dominated by atmospheric CO2? Water vapor, desert land area and viability, and plant growth might seem too basic; but these issues are certainly relevant. Solar desalination might contribute significantly to expand plant growth and reverse some concerns.

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Frank

July 7, 2010 18:24

Can someone explain to me why we are spending billions on NASA to have them figure out the complexities of a voyage to Mars (or whatever)? Would it be a radical suggestion to funnel some of that money and expertise into research on alternate energy? A lot of NASA resources are contractors, and we could just as easily hire cadres of people skilled in the science to help address our energy needs (other than carbon-based). If climate change is such a crisis, why aren’t we putting all available resources against that challenge?

Rather than wasting time and money on attempts to limit CO2 emissions, the US should look at extracting from the atmosphere more CO2 than we emit. There is a proven, simple, effective and inexpensive approach for this by means of fertilizing the growth of plankton but the United Nations have forbidden its use (see my comment above dated August 12th.)

Besides, does United Nations have jurisdiction over the oceans? If so, they are failing miserably and, the future of mankind being at stake, I believe that the US could and should act in this matter unilaterally if that becomes necessary.

I completely disagree with your statement that we do not have the technology for tackling global warming. It’s just one more myth to add to your list.

As explained below, we do have the technology and it is due to inept thinking on the part of United Nations scientists that we are not applying it.

Scarcely a day goes by without some announcement as to yet another effort to limit CO2 emissions, here or there, for the purpose of fighting global warming. Yet, all such attempts are futile given that so much CO2 has already accumulated in the atmosphere that even if we ended all CO2 emissions today, global warming would probably continue to increase unabated.

However, as explained below, we do have the technology to extract CO2 from the atmosphere and it is due to inept thinking on the part of United Nations scientists that we are not applying it.

Before going into details, it might be useful to frame the problem: It is since the advent of the industrial revolution circa 1,850 that factories and transportation caused a large and enduring increase in the amount of CO2 emissions. This phenomenon has been compounded by the rapid increase in the population given that humans emit CO2 as they breathe. As a result, an enormous quantity of CO2 has accumulated in the atmosphere given that we emitted more than could be absorbed by plants and by the sea. So much so, that the amount of new CO2 that we emit nowadays is a drop in the bucket compared to the quantity of CO2 that has already accumulated in the atmosphere since around 1,850 as the atmospheric concentration of CO2 increased by about 30%. It is this enormous quantity of atmospheric CO2 that traps the heat from the Sun, thus causing about 30% of global warming. The point is that, if we are to stop or reverse global warming, we need to extract from the atmosphere more CO2 than we emit.

However, all we are currently attempting is to limit emissions of CO2. This is too little, too late and totally useless inasmuch it could reduce our CO2 emissions by only 5% at best, while achieving nothing in terms of diminishing the amount of atmospheric CO2. Rather than wasting precious time on attempts to LIMIT our CO2 emission, we should focus on EXTRACTING from the atmosphere more CO2 than we are emitting. We have a proven method for this that couldn’t be simpler, more effective and inexpensive, so what are we waiting for?

More specifically, it has been shown that atmospheric CO2 has been perhaps twice higher than now in the not too distant past (some 250,000 years ago.) So what caused it to drop to as low as it was around 1,850? It was primarily due to the plankton that grows on the surface of the sea where it absorbs CO2 that it converts to biomass before dying and sinking to the bottom of the sea where it eventually becomes trapped in sedimentary rock where it turns to oil or gas. There simply isn’t enough biomass on the 35% of Earth’s surface that is land (as opposed to sea) for this biomass to grow fast enough to soak up the excess atmospheric CO2 that we have to contend with. Plankton, on the other hand, can grow on the 65% of the Earth that is covered by the sea where it absorbs atmospheric CO2 much faster, in greater quantities and sequesters it for thousands of years in the form of oil and gas.

Growing plankton is thus an extremely efficient, yet simple and inexpensive process for removing the already accumulated CO2 from the atmosphere. All we need to do is to dust the surface of the ocean with rust (i.e. iron oxides) that serves as a fertilizer that causes plankton to grow. The resulting plankton grows and blooms over several days, absorbing CO2 as it does, and then about 90% of it that isn’t eaten by fish sinks to the bottom of the sea. Experts calculate that if all ocean-going vessels participated in such an effort worldwide, we could return atmospheric CO2 concentration to its 1,850 level within 30 years. It’s very inexpensive and easy to do, wouldn’t interfere with the ships’ normal activities and would, in fact, earn them carbon credits that CO2 emitters would be required to buy. Moreover it is the ONLY approach available for addressing global warming on the global scale that is necessary.

By contrast, efforts to limit CO2 emissions by means of CO2 sequestration could address only about 5% of NEW CO2 generated by power plants. So even while causing our electricity costs to treble or quadruple, such efforts wouldn’t remove any of the massive amount of CO2 already accumulated in the atmosphere. In fact, the climatologist James Hansen believes that even if we could stop all CO2 emissions as of today, it may already be too late to avert run-away, global warming as there is enough CO2 in the atmosphere for global warming to keep increasing in what he fears is becoming an irreversible process. In other words, atmospheric CO2 is trapping more heat than Earth can dissipate which causes temperature to rise inexorably.

So what prevents us from proceeding with plankton fertilization? It is the fact that the United Nations have forbidden it on the basis of scientific studies that raised concerns about some of the unknowns involved, including the possibility that oxygen levels might decrease deep in the oceans and also that some varieties of plankton (i.e. such as the ones that cause “red tides”) produce harmful compounds (such as the neurotoxin domoic acid) that would find their way into the food chain.

However, such concerns are unjustified on the basis of other scientific studies and seafood is now routinely screened for domoic acid. Moreover, they are contradicted by the facts: there is no denying that it is primarily plankton that brought down the atmospheric concentration of CO2 by about 50% to 75% from what it was around 250,000 years ago and that it did so without destroying marine life. So the growth of plankton in the sea is nothing new or that hasn’t been occurring for millions of years. Therefore, dusting the surface of the oceans with iron oxides today would amount to nothing more than restoring a natural process in which, for millions of years, winds from the deserts spread iron oxides over the oceans causing plankton to grow. All we would need to do is to proceed cautiously by means of selecting the right kinds of plankton and where and to what extent to fertilize their growth.

Are there other uncertainties? Yes, of course, but inaction is no longer an option at a time when we are already speeding into unknown territory where the only certainty is that life as we know it might become unsustainable within 50 to 100 years. Let us not forget that about 9% of CO2 emissions are from humans as they breathe and about 75% as they burn fossil fuels. Yet, CO2 emissions from power plants represent at most about 5% of the total CO2 emissions. However, it is only this 5% of CO2 emissions from power plants that we are talking about limiting by means of sequestration – an exercise in futility!

It’s time to wake up to the facts: attempting to limit CO2 emissions is a senseless waste of time and money given that we are past the point when cutting our CO2 emissions by 5% could make a dent – we cannot LIMIT the other 95% as its emission is so widespread that it is impossible to capture. But we sure can and absolutely must EXTRACT the excess CO2 from the atmosphere. There is no other conceivable way to slow, let alone, reverse global warming.

But we are running out of time, so we need to act fast. Global warming may become irreversible and the survival of the human species is at stake.

Please spread the word. We need to act fast. Global warming may become irreversible and the survival of the human species is at stake.